


Icarus

by LunnarChild



Series: mr. amnesia, the antichrist, and the angelic reject [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, First Love, Star-crossed, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:12:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6875710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnarChild/pseuds/LunnarChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren’t a Winchester till you have killed someone you love. (No one tells Ben this till it’s one deal too late).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icarus

You aren’t a Winchester till you have killed someone you love. (No one tells Ben this till it’s one deal too late).

            Ben learns this hardest of all. Clara is bright and soft, and kind – the kind of girl his mother wishes he’d bring home, that any mother wishes their son to bring home. They were partnered once in History and they brought their work back to his home. His mother practically falls in love with Clara herself. Every half-hour she would walk into the room giving thumbs up when she thought Clara wasn’t looking. (She did, calling it cute, and Ben thought he was going to die from embarrassment).

            She goes to church every Sunday and never has anything bad to say (doesn’t mean she doesn’t think it). She turns out to be of the few to look at him and _see_ him, the parts that most people didn’t care to look for. Clara is the kind of person, that if she died, would leave behind a hundred different people grieving. The kind of girl who leaves soft touches and fills his memory with gentle smiles – even when he was just another face in the crowd.

            She was smart, brilliant like a sun. Sometimes Ben wondered if he stepped too close he would be scorched and follow in Icarus’s lead, melt under her radiance and fall into the abyss.

           (What could he say? She brought out his inner dork.)

            Clara White was everything he wasn’t. She was short with soft curves, dressed in flowing pastels and sensible flats. He wore leather jackets, heavy boots, and jeans beat to hell that was tattered at the knees that made you wonder how they didn’t just fall apart at the seams. She was respectable, he wore TroubleTM like armor. She saw the good in people where he was distrustful by nature. He didn’t want that kind of girl but he did want _her_. Soft voice, gentle smile, and bright brown eyes included for however long he could have. But of course he’s sixteen, a little high off of the testosterone that seems to be flooding his system every other hour – and she quickly becomes the ex-something. An ex-something was worse than _the-one-who-got-away_ because _the-one-who-got-away_ implies he had a chance. No, Clara was an ex-almost.

            There’s a gruff voice in his head that he’s had since he was twelve that calls him an idiot. Ben agreed. As he watched the town shrink in the rear-view mirror, he makes himself an impossible promise. If he ever saw her again, he'd take that chance. Even if it was a snowball's chance in hell that she would ever say yes, because she was worth it, even the heartbreak and disappointment. It’s a terrifying thought because he knows that she deserved better, that if he _really liked her_ , really cared about her, he would stay the hell out of her life.

            He doesn’t know why, but there’s some part of him knows that this rings true.

            He sees her again three years later. They’re attending the same university and Ben is trying to calculate the odds when she spots him. It turns out they have two different classes together and before he knows it, he’s agreed to a Saturday coffee. Clara has the decency to look sheepish but Ben is too flabbergasted to care.

            They meet up at this obscure café, three blocks from the campus at noon. He’s ten minutes early, fidgeting with the lock button on his phone in the meantime. Just when he thinks he’s busted the button she appears in a flurry of curly hair and her cheeks are stained red. (Ben think’s it's adorable). They get their orders and it's awkward as hell because the last time they had a conversation was when they were sixteen. It starts off with small stuff, which builds and builds till before they know it, it's eight at night and neither of them is quite ready to call it quits.

            He asks if she’s up for a burger because he knows this great place ten minutes from here. She smiles and yes has never sounded so magical to his ears.

            They go on half a dozen dates and countless study dates before Clara kisses him. They know each other better; he learns that she’s a spitfire, a rose so in bloom that its petals hide the sharp thorns underneath that puts up with none of his shit. She doesn’t try to change him, but he wants to be worthy of her so he reigns in the sass and bullshit. He doesn’t push for anything and lets her take the lead, taking whatever she’s willing to give. (He still punches out the next guy who calls him domesticated. All Clara does is give him _the look_ when she finds out and bandages his hand. Seriously, he does not deserve her.) If he didn’t know any better, he would say it was damn near magic.

            It’s not always fair weather between the two of them but God, Ben think’s that one year was perfect. They ease into each other’s life so seamlessly; he wonders how he has ever lived his life without her. He gets use to the casual touches as her hand unconsciously reaches for his arms, tracing invisible lines on his skin. Stolen kisses under blue summer skies and long drives in that classic ’67 Impala he’s been fixing up since he was sixteen.  He learns to love the easy silence between them. They fit like pieces of a puzzle. But it isn’t easy, they work at it, compromise, it’s a relationship. That gruff voice that’s been with him for as long as he can remember tells him it's proud of him. He doesn’t know she’s _the one_ , the long haul, but God willing, he wants every last second she’ll give and he’ll return it two-fold.

            He learns that nothing stays perfect for long. Two weeks after their first year anniversary they get slammed by a drunk driver which sends both cars flipping off the road. Later, when he wakes groggily from a hospital bed with his mother sleeping restlessly from his bedside, clutching his hand, he’ll learn the other driver died on impact. How it was a miracle he was even alive by the time anyone found them. But the first thing he asks is if Clara is okay, what happened to Clara? Is she going to alright?

            All he can remember is the sound of the radio and Clara’s laugh at some stupid joke he made then the screech of metal, that breathless feeling of impact, then pain. He remembers slipping in and out of the darkness that has nothing to do with the time of night. He remembers the echo of Clara’s desperate cries and the sharp pain that shoots up his side like lightning that he nearly blacks out again. She’s screaming, yelling, begging and Ben is clawing to remain conscious.

            “Ben, BEN! Please, stay with me, BEN! Ben, please!” the sound is heartbreaking. His side is stickily warm with a thick fluid and his head is pounding so hard he can’t think. “Ben, answer me please.”

            He tries to answer but all he can reply with is the breathless, raspy gasps. It’s getting harder to breath, he can’t feel anything in his right arm – his whole right side really – and the blackouts are getting longer. The slow warmth at his side is growing warmer as he gets steadily cooler. There’s a part of him that knows he isn’t going to last much longer. Clara is cursing now and it's shocking because Clara never curses. It’s almost funny. Ben tries to laugh, tell her this one joke only he can’t remember the punch line.

            “God, you absolute fucking dick, I did everything you asked me. Don’t do this, don’t take him, please! You fucking asshole, don’t you fucking take him! Ben, please, keep talking, please. God, you are a fucking ass! BEN!”

            There’s this moaning sound and it takes a long time before he realizes that it's him. He thinks he’s trying to say something, something like “its okay, I’m okay, see, it’s going be okay” but all that comes out is this undecipherable mumble. The world turns mute and there’s this static ringing in his ears. It’s only then he realizes that he never told her he loved her. God, he _loved_ her…

            When he opens his eyes he’s in the hospital and all he can think of is Clara. The doctors have to sedate him before he pulls his stitches and overexerts himself. He dreams of soulless black eyes and cold words that cut. It gets chased away by that familiar voice in his head, whispering promises that it's going be okay from here on out. It turns out to be the first lie the voice ever tells.

            The next time he wakes up, Clara is resting on his uninjured side. She isn’t asleep but she lies there, breathing. Ben can’t see her face but he knows something’s wrong. Clara has always felt like his personal furnace, warm to the touch like a soothing balm. Now she’s cold and there’s a rigidness to her that wasn’t there before. Ben still somewhat disoriented wants to chalk it up to the accident he barely remembers but he can’t quite convince himself.

            “Please, don’t say anything.” Her voice isn’t much more than a whisper but there’s something shockingly empty about how she sounds. Like all the life and goodness, and warmth was sucked out of her. “Let me lie here?”

            “Sure,” his voice is hoarse as he stumbles over the words. He can feel Clara flinch. “Whatever you want.”

            “Tell me a story? One with a happy ending?” Ben thinks that he can feel the hesitant twitch of her lips vainly trying to form a smile.

            “I don’t think I know one with a happy ending.”

            “Then tell me anything. Anything you can think of, just nothing sad. I don’t think I can handle any more sad stories.”

            “Who’s been telling you sad stories?”

            “No one. It’s just…”

            “It’s just _what_?”

            “Maybe that’s all we were supposed to be. Just another sad story.”

            Ben snorts which jar his entire body, sending flashes of white-hot pain up his sides but right now, he does not care. “I call bullshit. Do you want us to be a sad story?”

            “Of course not! I’m just saying maybe-”

            “Maybe nothing. No one but us can tell how our relationship is going to end. Period. Everyone else can fuck off.”

            “Ben!” he lets himself relax when he can feel her smile into his hospital gowned. “Change the subject, please.”

            He smiles to himself and rummages through his mind for stupid stories from his childhood. He pushes his uneasiness aside, tries not to think about the holes in his memory or how he’s missing a whole year’s worth of personal details. Clara falls asleep to the story about the time he went fishing with his mom when he was twelve and got a hook stuck in his ear.

            It was a fragmented memory, Ben thinks there might have been someone else that was there with them but he can’t remember who might it been. It was one of the few memories he had of his childhood that was not Swiss cheese, thus precious.

            Ben drifted off trying to convince himself they were going to be okay. They had to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Congratulations to anyone who made it to the bottom of this fic.
> 
> So this was complete self-indulgence, in figuring out the dynamic between my OC Clara White and Ben Braeden. I know there is a stigma against OCs and especially female OC's with cannon characters but I swear she has a purpose to this story. The final chapter will be posted sometime after I publish the first chapter of the official story, sometime hopefully in the near future. However if you ask anyone who subscribes my The Thing About Us fic, I can be a little unreliable about schedules. 
> 
> So, thanks for reading. If you liked this keep an eye out for the next fic!


End file.
